I've got a Mk. IV Martini Henry, its in great shape, bore is a little dark in places otherwise it's about what you would expect. It's not a recent import, in fact it was found in an antique shop. They had a 20% off sale on everything in the store and that made it fairly reasonably priced. Then I bought 60 rounds of ammo, and found out the drawbacks of that particular cartridge. The bullet diameter for one, the case capacity for another, paper patching the bullet,over powder wads, grease cookies,etc. etc. and I'm sure there are other things I've left out. Those of you that shoot the .577/.450 M.H. know what this is all about. My question is should I rebarrel this to .303, or should I just trade the gun off to some unsuspecting poor guy that wants to have a Zulu gun?
What say you?
Gary K

mapsjanhere

March 30, 2010, 10:39 AM

If it's in reasonable original condition the rebarreling sounds like sacrilege. Maybe ask the question at a more specialized forum (http://forums.gunboards.com/forumdisplay.php?15-Martini-Henry-Forum).

Scorch

March 30, 2010, 01:26 PM

If it is a Mark IV, sure no problem, but not a Mark I or Mark II. I know of very few smiths that will rebarrel a Mark I to 303 British because the receiver is made of cast iron. But you can't shoot milsurp 303 ammo in it, it was made for lower pressure ammo. Better yet, rebarrel to 45-70.

You can rebarrel to 45-70 very easily, we do a few every year. I am actually working on restocking 2 of them right now, a Mark II and a Mark IV.